The Best Travel Backpacks Are Like SUVs You Can Wear

Summer means trips of all shapes and sizes—from beach house weekends to month-long jaunts across Asia—and all trips require a roomy, pocket-laden backpack. GQ’s Best Stuff handpicked a dozen that are primed and ready for life on the road.

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How essential is having the right travel backpack? Look at this way: of all the forms of luggage, backpacks are the only one with their own widely-used verb. You don’t go carry-on-ing or trunking or duffeling. You go backpacking. And while you’re probably a little ways past your hostels-and-behemoth-backpacks phase, a less cumbersome version will still be indispensable wherever the summer takes you.

The chief distinctions between an office backpack and a travel backpack are twofold: size and pockets. The ideal travel pack has at least enough space to hold an extra pair of shoes and a change of clothes for a weekend away, and it should have plenty of compartments inside and out to keep your passport, phone and whatever else you carry all secure and organized. Oh, yeah, and it needs to look damn good, too, since unlike your checked luggage, it’ll likely stay on your person everywhere you go. We did the hard work for you and road-tested a whole bunch of the coolest, most convenient backpacks for beach vacations, business trips, and everything in between. Go forth and conquer, fam.

The (Sensible) Swag Lord Pick

Gucci RE(BELLE) leather backpack

You don’t buy red leather to be practical. You buy it to stunt like Thriller-era MJ, or Raw-era Eddie Murphy, or any-era Carmen Sandiego. And yet, somehow, this grail from Gucci—probably the least practical name in fashion—is as utilitarian as can be, from the big ol’ side pockets to the interior lining that sure looks like sumptuous suede (but is actually easy-to-clean microfiber). It just goes to show that no matter how much clout juice you pump into a hiking pack’s veins, you can’t ever really alter its essential, down-to-earth DNA.

The Actually-Outdoorsy Pick

Patagonia Black Hole backpack 25L

Why do menswear heads obsess over Patagonia like it’s a hot new streetwear line? It’s not just that the California label nails the ideal blend of laidback-cool, charmingly dad-ish design and hardwearing, expedition-ready functionality. Nor is it simply their decades-long commitment to sustainability and fair labor, or the fact that their founder is a mountain-climbing, big-wave-surfing, forward-thinking, Trump-challenging French badass. What makes Patagonia great is the peculiar chemistry of all those elements and more, which you’ll find very much present in this backpack. The exterior shell is fast-drying, weatherproof, environmentally-safe polyester ripstop that’ll survive your gnarliest hiking mishaps, but it’s also murdered out in black to keep things downtown fresh. Inside, there’s a minivan-spacious main compartment with pockets for your laptop and keys and trail mix, to go along with the comfy padded straps and water bottle holders outside. Altogether, it adds up to an everyday bag worth camping out for—though, thankfully, you won’t have to.

The Trend-Savvy Investment Pick

Bally Crew men’s plain calf leather backpack

Oftentimes, hopping aboard a trend train means coming to terms with the fact you’re spending money on something you may someday come to regret—likely in a decade or two, when your kids uncover a photo of you wearing it and laugh their ungrateful butts off. But while this backpack is very right now—blocked out in the regular colors we’ve been endorsing for a minute—we promise you won’t ever want to toss it in the fashion-fad trash heap alongside your denim tuxedo and Hammer pants. That’s because the heirloom experts at Bally were clever enough to lock said trendy colors down with plenty of timeless tan, and craft the whole damn thing out of uber-rich, better-with-age calfskin. Which means that rather than roasting you, your wiseass offspring will be begging you to borrow it instead. Not that you need any more convincing at this point, but Patrick Schwarzenegger carries this pack with him everywhere he goes.

The Tim Duncan Pick

A.P.C. “Maxence” backpack

If we’ve said it once, we’ve said it 100 times: nobody does streamlined, elevated simplicity quite like A.P.C. For 30 years, like the San Antonio Spurs (er, before this summer, at any rate) of fashion, the Parisian minimalists have stuck steadfastly and unwaveringly to the fundamentals and racked up ring after ring after ring in the process. Here’s another textbook example of their gameplan: it’s pared down to the absolute essentials—large main section cinched by a drawstring, sizable front zip pocket, padded adjustable straps—and then luxed-up the tiniest bit with a handsome touch of sheen on the finish of the otherwise no-nonsense technical canvas outer.

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